Hi. I am new user of LMDE2013 and i have problem with pulseaudio. System sounds are grayed and also test speakers sounds do not work. I am experiencing also crackling/noise playback through Pulseaudio output under VLC. Sound card is standard Realtek ALC888.

I also don't have system sounds on LMDE x64 with Cinnamon. I tried some suggestions from viewtopic.php?f=49&t=104761 but to no avail.Could you post some screenshots regarding this issue? Or at least the version of gnome-control-center package installed on your system:

I wonder why the libcanberra-pulse package is not installed automatically with gnome-control-center. Maybe some of the libcanberra* packages doesn't have the all dependences set correctly.

Edit: I've found out that the gnome-core package depends on libcanberra-pulse. gnome-core is installed with GNOME Desktop environment but not in LMDE. I'd say that LMDE developers could fix this as LMDE uses many components from GNOME (e.g. gnome-control-center) but without installling gnome-core and its dependences. Also, Debian maintainers could fix this -- see Debian bug 563382.